For this week’s Broadway Bulletin, we’ll be featuring the new shows Orphans, The Nance, Lucky Guy, and Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.

Make sure to check back next week to hear about the female-driven plays this season!

Click inside to learn about some of the new plays…

Orphans

Two orphaned brothers live in their decrepit North Philadelphia row house. They survive by petty thievery and a steady diet of tuna fish and daytime television until the violent older brother decides to kidnap Harold (Alec Baldwin), a notorious Chicago gangster. Harold soon becomes the force that will forever change their lives. Written by Lyle Kessler, directed by Daniel Sullivan (Glengarry Glen Ross) and featuring a critically acclaimed cast that also includes Ben Foster and Tom Sturridge!

In the 1930s, burlesque impresarios welcomed the hilarious comics and musical parodies of vaudeville to their decidedly lowbrow niche. A headliner called “the nance” was a stereotypically camp homosexual and master of comic double entendre – usually played by a straight man.

Douglas Carter Beane‘s The Nance recreates the naughty, raucous world of burlesque’s heyday and tells the backstage story of Chauncey Miles and his fellow performers. At a time when it is easy to play gay and dangerous to be gay, Chauncey’s uproarious antics on the stage stand out in marked contrast to his offstage life.

Lucky Guy marks a return to writer Nora Ephron‘s journalistic roots in a new play about the scandal- and graffiti-ridden New York of the 1980s, as told through the story of the charismatic and controversial tabloid columnist Mike McAlary, who won the Pulitzer Prize shortly before his untimely death on Christmas Day, 1998.

Vanya (David Hyde Pierce) and his sister Sonia (Kristine Nielsen) live a quiet life in the Pennsylvania farmhouse where they grew up. But their sister Masha (Sigourney Weaver) escaped many years ago… and became a famous movie star! When Masha returns unannounced with her twenty-something boy toy, Spike (Billy Magnussen), so begins an unforgettable weekend of rivalry, regret and generally hilarious racket. By the end of their impromptu family reunion, this lovable bunch won’t ever be the same!